Hotel & HospitalityChris ThomsonMon 25 May 26
Last Drinks for SA Pub Where Boozy Six O’Clock Swill Ended
A suburban pub where last drinks were called on Australia’s boozy six o’clock swill will be demolished and redeveloped under plans filed by a company that owns 17 hotels and gaming venues across South Australia.
The RD Jones Group—founded in 1982 by Richard and Denise Jones who started off with a country hotel at Victor Harbour—wants to demolish then redevelop its Challa Gardens Hotel on Torrens Road in the north-western Adelaide suburb of West Croyden.
The hotel was where, at 6.01pm on September 28, 1967, then-South Australian Premier Don Dunstan raised a glass in a front bar full of patrons to signify his government’s abolition, effective at that moment, of 6pm hotel closing times across South Australia.
This ended Australia’s six-o-clock swill, a slang term for the last-minute rush to buy alcohol at a pub before it closed.
Across Australia during much of the 20th century, state governments compelled hotels to shut their public bars at 6pm. This incentivised heavy drinking during the 60 minutes between workers’ 5pm knock-off time and the mandatory closing time.
One by one from 1937 to 1966, Australia’s states extended their drinking hours. South Australia, then known by critics as “the wowser state”, was the last jurisdiction to do so. Dunstan’s decision ushered in a freer era where SA would eventually come to be known by its self-proclaimed metonym of The Festival State.
If the two-storey Challa Gardens project is approved by the City of Charles Sturt, the pub will be replaced by a new one.
Designed by Adelaide-based Studio Nine Architects, the redeveloped hotel would have a sports lounge, gaming room, beer garden, dining room, kids’ area, drive-through bottle shop, five function rooms, and an upstairs lounge bar and outdoor terrace.
The 702-person-capacity hotel is licensed to serve alcohol 22 hours-a-day Mondays through Saturdays and 19 hours-a-day on Sundays. The venue can operate up to 40 gaming machines for 16 hours-a-day, seven days a week. Neither the capacity of the pub nor its liquor-sales licence would be changed under the redevelopment plans.
Public comment on the proposal is due to close on June 5.
Meanwhile, at Elizabeth North in Adelaide’s north-east, Fitzgibbons Hotels & Leisure Group managing director Gavin Strack has applied to reburbish the Red Lion Hotel on Woodford Road.
If approved by the City of Playford, the revamp would increase patronage from 170 to 370 and expand outdoor dining areas and the drive-through bottle shop on the 3540sq m site.
The Fitzgibbons family has operated hotels, mainly in South-East Queensland, since the 1930s. Aside from the Red Lion, the family’s firm runs the Logan City Tavern south of Brisbane and The Robina Pavilion hotel on the Gold Coast.
No changes are proposed to the hotel’s existing hours of operation, which are 10am to 4am daily.
Project documents nominate population growth and significant housing development in northern Adelaide as incentive for the hotel revamp, which has been designed by Brisbane-based KP Architects.
Public comment on the two-storey project closes on June 9.
The RD Jones Group and Fitzgibbons Hotels & Leisure Group were contacted for comment for this story.
